A Vacation Camping In The Shenandoahs

We are just back from a 4-night camping trip in Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park, and it was not long enough. Nobody wanted to leave.

Just two years ago, when our youngest and (quite frankly) least malleable child was four years old, this would have been an astonishing statement. We did a couple of two-nighters back then in the Berkshires. By the end of both trips I was ready to start banging myself on the head with the frying pan.

This year we seem to have crossed over from a family that endures camping trips to a family that truly enjoys them. I guess you could say we finally found our rhythm.

I love waking up in a tent, mostly because I love being outside. I’d spend every waking moment in every kind of weather outside if I could. I should have been a hunter-gatherer. I would have been fantastic.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda….

Who needs big houses and air conditioning and indoor plumbing? Forget all that and get outside! I am somewhat proud to report that during our five days in the woods not one of us took a shower, though they were available up near the campground entrance: a buck for five minutes. By the end of the trip we had cultivated a fetching scent of campfire smoke, bug spray and sweat. I had a four-inch dreadlock growing up the back of my head pulling all of my matted hair into its orbit.

Oooo, la la!

Thanks to our aforementioned youngest child, the only one among us with a yen for sociability, we met our camping neighbors. Most afternoons following a four or five mile hike in stunningly beautiful wilderness, eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on the fly, our kids would play with the neighbor kids in the meadow-y woods around the campsite until dinnertime while us parents read or ran on the Appalachian Trail or sat around having dreamy conversations inspired by the wildlife and the views.

Such was the flow of our days.

When you’re camping in a tent, you are by nature unplugged. That to me is the best part. You have no idea what’s going on in the world and the world has no idea what’s going on with you. There was no question of email or Facebook or computer games. We had to walk a mile up to the Big Meadows Lodge, a beautiful wood, stone and glass structure built by the Civilian Conservation Corps back in the 1930s, to get any sort of cell phone coverage. Quick calls to parents were all we allowed ourselves, just to let them know we were alive.

Because we were! We were quite definitely alive. Up with the sun, down with the moon, and quickly under cover in the rain. We followed nature’s lead. It was a vacation in the strict sense of the word. Our minds were empty of thoughts about home, our memories vacant. We were all living right in the moment, the way we are supposed to live all the time, but so rarely do.

None of us can wait to get back out there.